Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Okay. So Mars
and I are now the proud owners of three, possibly four, teasels, two agastache
and a pair of perillae. And a week ago
I didn’t even know what they were.

It all began
when we returned from our week of golfing at Penn State University – a school
run by the Women’s Varsity coach and her staff under the auspices of the Road
Scholar (nee Elderhostel) Program. Among
the seven messages left on our answering machine was one from F*, a fellow member
of my men’s garden club, urgently requesting that I call him ASAP, immediatly
followed by a second more insistent communiqué left the following day talking
about a “once in a lifetime opportunity’.

Normally I
ignore such telephonic entreaties but knowing the caller I overrode my bias and
phoned him. Still I was half expecting
to hear a deep male Nigerian accent (which F* is not) telling me in halting
English that he was stranded in some European country with his credit cards and
passport stolen and needing $350.00 to buy his way home. Instead I got, “The
number you have reached is no longer in service”

I checked the
online white pages, called again, and got the same message. Figuring that he might have some sort of
electrical or telephonic problem, and having his office phone number I left a
message on that machine and went about the business of retuning home. It was the same story the next day so Mars
and I took a ride to his house to investigate.

F* and his
wife were in the throes of changing their home landline service provider and without
connectivity for a few days during the cutover – hence the communications
blackout. All was well but F* wanted to
go for a short ride with Mars and me to see the source of his great excitement.

We slowly
weaved our way through the short, narrow streets of the historic district of
our town and pulled up in front of the house belonging to C* – master gardener
extraordinaire and widow of a former club member. Along the way F* told us that C* is moving
from her house and the new homeowner planned to bulldoze under all of her
plants, mostly perennials, and replace them with a solid grass lawn. So C* is allowing her friends to come and
take what they want in order to save the plants.

He warned us
to expect to see a few cars and trucks parked at the scene – there were four
plus a large trailer. It was ninety
degrees and sunny. And there were a
larger number of gardeners armed with thick glove, black plastic pots, and
shovels working diligently in the hot August sun – not all of whom were visible
among the literally hundreds of plants of various kinds and heights that were
growing on pretty much every inch of C*’s property.

A few of the
bushes were already reserved with paper tags and yarn much like you might find
at a Christmas tree farm in early December – some by horticulturalists
from our state university; a couple by savvy landscaping companies; and one or
two by other master gardeners. Many
quite rare breeds, still unclaimed, sat hidden in the shadows of more
pedestrian strains such as a ten-foot tall purple Butterfly Bush, behind which
nestled a type of evergreen that apparently lost its needles every fall and
completely regenerated them in the spring ,yet still retained its “evergreen”
status. I personally could identify
about half of what I saw in front (and on every side) of me.

You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting an unusual
plant.

Well actually
there wasn’t enough room to brandish a departed, or living, feline. – probably by design. The garden’s theme was plants that attract birds – a purpose
towards which Mars and I decided to work in our own yard a couple of years
ago. In light of that, and under C*’s
expert guidance, we selected some teasel – a three to eight foot tall plant
with purple, dark pink or lavender flowers that form a head on the end of the
stem.

The seeds mature in mid autumn and
can be a winter food resource for Goldfinches and other birds. (The dried head of the plant was used in the textile
industry to provide a natural comb for raising the nap on fabrics, particularly
wool.) It is a self-seeding biannual
that apparently spreads like crazy. I am
used to that however, already spending a good chunk of my gardening time
corralling the tansy, goose-neck loosestrife, Chinese lanterns and other space
seeking plants that we have previously adopted.

We also took a
pair of agastaches which we mistakenly thought were “just the right size”
butterfly bushes. Pale purple in color
these perennials also attract goldfinches – which Mars and I personally can
never get enough of. The small leaves
smell like mint – the plant is sometimes called Hummingbird Mint – and like its
namesake and our other acquisitions it apparently it also is an inveterate land
grabber.

Our final
acquisition was perilla – an actual member of the mint family, which can be
added to salads. According to Wikipedia
“the plant is self-sowing….has been widely naturalized in parts of the United
States and Canada, from Texas and Florida north to Connecticut and into Ontario,
and west to Nebraska. It can be weedy or invasive in some of these regions.”

I planted the
three varieties in a largely sunny area within a few feet of each other and
near to some of the other perennials that provide stalking shelter to the
neighborhood cats that hunt on our property.

I am not
trying to crowd out these domesticated predators – there is still more than
ample room to twirl one of more of them about should the opportunity present
itself. Nor am I attempting to attract
more bright yellow meals for them to prey upon.

The “theme” of
our garden, if any, is that there is always room for one more plant –
especially if otherwise its next stop would be the compost pile, or even worse
the hostile blade of a maleficent bulldozer.